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“The PRI's 2006 Electoral Debacle”

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“The PRI's 2006 Electoral Debacle” The PRI’s 2006 Electoral Debacle Joy Langston Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) Forthcoming in PS: Political Science and Politics, 40 (January 2007). The PRI’s 2006 Electoral Debacle Joy Langston Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) This short article outlines why the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico for the final 71 years of the twentieth century, not only lost the 2006 presidential election, but posted a miserable third place finish by taking only 22.7% of the national vote versus 36.7% for the winner, Felipe Calderón of the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and 36.1% for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). It also explains why, despite its recent electoral results, the once- hegemonic party will continue to play an important, but reduced political role: as a coalition partner with the governing PAN to create majorities in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The PRI was, from its inception in 1929 (as the Party of the National Revolution or PNR) until it first lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies in 1997, the hegemonic party in Mexico. The PRI did not lose a governorship to another party until 1989 and did not relinquish presidential power until 2000. The loss of the executive in 2000 to the PAN’s Vicente Fox was a traumatic shock to the once-invincible party, and its leaders were determined to retake Los Pinos (Mexico’s equivalent of the White House) in the 2006 presidential election.1 During 2004 and the first half of 2005, the PRI saw a quick return to power as a definite possibility as it had done very well in state elections during the last years of Fox’s term.2 The president’s party had not been successful negotiating crucial bills in the legislature, most of which were directed at reforming backward areas of the economy, such as the tax, labor, and energy sectors. The macroeconomic growth indicators were not strong (except for foreign reserves), and although President Fox had promised 7% growth during his term, the economy had been sluggish, with GDP gaining approximately 2.5% in the first five years. Furthermore, the candidate most observers considered to be the PAN’s most likely presidential nominee, the former Secretary of Gobernación (roughly, the Home Office or Interior Ministry) Santiago Creel, looked like a weak competitor, while the PRD’s candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was weathering a series of legal challenges and corruption charges. Given the PRI’s optimism through the middle of 2005, what can explain such a terrible electoral showing in both the presidential elections and in the legislative arena (in which the PRI lost half of its House and Senate delegates)? Many factors influenced the final electoral outcome, but two major problems help account for the PRI’s debacle. First, the PRI’s presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo, proved unacceptable not only to the nation’s roughly 70 million voters, but also to a 1 Mexico’s constitution prohibits re-election for presidents; the term lasts six years. 2 Mexico is a federalist regime with 31 states and a Federal District that shares many of the attributes of a state. The states’ directly elected governors are voted in on a staggered calendar so that state elections take place every year during the six-year presidential term except for one. good number of his own party’s factions and leaders who refused to support his campaign effort. Second, the ideological polarization of the campaign between the PAN’s more free-market Calderón and the PRD’s more populist López Obrador rendered Madrazo irrelevant as Mexico’s electorate was forced to decide between the Left and the Right, with the middle dropping out. Madrazo was unable to capitalize on the polarization because his macroeconomic promises were neither clear nor credible, and he failed in his attempt to make the salient issue of the campaign the PAN’s perceived incompetence in governing. Thus, the third place finish was expected, though the low percentage of his vote share was surprising.3 The PRI’s devastating electoral defeat does not begin with a stumble during the campaign tour, but with the presidential nomination process, and even before. We next examine why the public had such a negative perception of Madrazo and why it proved impossible for his campaign to overcome this image despite spending several million dollars on mass media appeals. The Candidate Madrazo’s own political background hindered his efforts to convince voters of his sincerity and electoral platform. He had, in effect, “bought” his election to governorship of Tabasco in 1994 (Eisenstadt 2004), and six years later, when it was time to choose another PRI gubernatorial candidate for Tabasco, he destroyed the local party apparatus by forcing his personal candidate on the party.4 Finally, he was accused of fraudulent spending in Tabasco’s gubernatorial election in 2000, which eventually led to the disqualification of the electoral results by the Federal Electoral Tribunal and the imposition of a special election (which his specially placed candidate eventually won). Madrazo’s party adversaries even charged him with fraudulent behavior against his own party brethren to win what was widely considered a tainted election for the presidency of the PRI’s National Executive Committee (CEN) in 2002. Once ensconced in the party presidency, his strategy to place the PRI in an advantageous position for the 2006 presidential elections became clear. First, Madrazo successfully led the PRI to a positive showing in the 2003 midterm congressional elections, in what was considered a referendum vote against the PAN administration’s first three years in office. Then, by refusing to lend his 222-strong House delegation to form legislative majorities, Madrazo blocked President Fox from passing regular legislation or constitutional reforms for the second half of the sexenio (the Mexican president’s one six-year term). In this way, Madrazo hoped that the PAN and the president would look incompetent and ineffective, thus paving the way for the PRI’s triumphant return to Los Pinos. At the same time Madrazo was implementing this strategy, however, he was making important enemies within his party. The PRI is a large organization, containing many 3 It is impossible to know how much strategic voting took place at the end of the campaign because throughout the campaign period, many public opinion polls estimated a higher proportion for the PRI than turned out to be the case. See Moreno (2006). 4 Several important state and national PRI politicians left the party in 2000 over the accusations of Madrazo’s favoritism in the candidate selection process. For example, the PRD’s candidate in the 2000 Tabasco race, César Raúl Ojeda, was once a close collaborator of Madrazo’s in the state PRI. factions and groups. Some of the most important groups revolve around the party’s 17 state governors, while union leaders constitute the party’s other major powerbrokers. Both of these actors control resources—both money and activist labor—crucial to campaigning. However, Madrazo, in his quest to win his party’s presidential nomination, tried to destroy two rival powerbrokers within the PRI, Elba Esther Gordillo, the leader of the enormous and resource-rich National Teachers’ Union (SNTE) and affectionately known to her followers as la Maestra (the teacher), and Arturo Montiel, governor of the Estado de México (Mexico’s largest state, which surrounds the Federal District, and incorporates many of the suburbs of Mexico City), who competed with Madrazo for the party’s presidential nomination. Madrazo demonstrated a lack of a firm policy stand on structural reform when he knocked Gordillo from her powerful party leadership positions. Gordillo, as general secretary of the CEN and second in command, had been pressing the PRI to cooperate with the PAN on fiscal, labor, and energy reforms. When she was elected in mid-2003 to lead the PRI faction in the new Congress, she immediately began working with Fox and the PAN legislative leaders on a fiscal reform bill. Madrazo took part in the negotiations and publicly backed a bipartisan proposal which resulted. However, when the PRI deputies refused to line up behind their House leader, Madrazo took advantage of the incipient rebellion brewing against Gordillo’s leadership to destroy her by attacking the fiscal reform as anti-PRI. Gordillo was voted out of her House leadership position and later abandoned her deputy seat. Though Madrazo had rid himself of a strong party leader, he was now seen by the business community, to which he had promised this reform, as a leader whose promises on structural reforms were not credible. Governor Montiel’s downfall, which most believe was orchestrated by Madrazo, ended up harming Madrazo as much as Montiel, largely because the corruption charges brought against Montiel tainted the entire PRI campaign. Montiel, with other current and recent PRI governors, had formed the Democratic Unity, a group within the PRI to present a single candidate to compete against Madrazo in the nomination primary so as not to split the anti-Madrazo vote. Montiel eventually won this pre-nomination contest, and polls showed him closing in on Madrazo in August 2005, a few months before the party primary. Weeks later, information linking his immense fortune to state resources was leaked to the press and he quickly withdrew from the nomination race, leaving the way clear for Madrazo. However, because of the PRI’s long history of corruption in office, the unanswered accusations of using state resources for private gain hit the PRI and Madrazo as hard as they did Montiel.
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